College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Art and Art History

Tamara Brantmeier

Desiring to help students “create connections” between contemporary art practice and practices used in various historical periods, Tamara has her students identify paintings of different time periods and compare them to contemporary pieces so that they better grasp the concepts that underlie the practice. When students ask questions, Tamara turns the question back on them, asking them to find the answer. As a result, they more effectively comprehend the topic and this method allows the students to become better researchers, plus it shows them just how wise they really are. In addition, she requires students to use their sketchbooks to record the research and process that goes into creating a work of art. Tamara shows examples of historical and contemporary sketchbooks, encouraging students to find the best method of documentation for their unique creative process.

As he has advanced as a teacher, James has re-educated himself in an effort to find new ways to teach and new art-related examples to use. In his art survey course (110 students), he lectures with illustrations and gives in-class quizzes to encourage student engagement. For his upper level courses, he allows students, with some supervision, more autonomy in choosing the material they feel they should know and be tested on throughout the semester and for the final. In fact, he uses study teams to identify textbook concepts, takes their nominations into consideration, and then condenses them into a set of fifty slides to be learned by the end of the semester. This process gives students ownership in the agenda and scope of the class. James also requires student teams to complete research projects and present their findings as well as read, discuss and summarize text content in an effort to elicit student thinking about epistemology in the field of art.

Andy Ducett

Desiring to treat his students as “human beings with different experiences, talents, and knowledge,” Andy provides an overview, demonstrates it, and then has them duplicate it as he goes around the room, one-on-one, seeing each student at least twice. He also incorporates sports, movies, and any means of showing figures in motion, once even hiring a string band to play in class so that students could hear the music and draw the performers’ gestures.

Amy Fichter

In an effort to improve students’ life drawing skills, Amy developed the teaching strategy: “Noticing.” This technique allows students to respond to the prompt, “What I notice is . . .”, encouraging them to comment on each other’s work in a less superficial and judgmental way. When students get these comments, they have to write what they would do differently. Amy also uses student-created blogs to help them respond to each others’ work and build a sense of community.

Charles Lume

In an effort to help students find their own definition of the past and present as well as provide them with a medium in which to explore their relationship with religion in art, Charles created assignments that require students to interpret genres associated with past art that portrays heaven, hell, and before-and-after the fall in the garden. This is meaningfully connected with modern-day genres, resulting in a valuable experience given the vast array of student backgrounds and the variety of interpretations that have emerged.

English and Philosophy

Leslie Bowen

To help her students learn course material, Leslie uses the quiz function in D2L, not as a test but as a way to open discussion. Students take the quiz with open book and open notes, and they can work together. The quiz is based on their reading and may, for example, ask them to identify parallel structure and then find a sentence in their essay that would be improved by using that structure. Leslie also has conferences one-on-one, and finds that eases students’ minds about the class and because she believes in the value of group discussion, she also actively uses the D2L Discussion Board option. She sets up groups and the members do peer review on the discussion board, read and critique each other’s essays. Students receive points for posting their work and for giving feedback.

Mike Critchfield

Using existential philosophy as an organizing principle, Mike discusses fictional and dramatic works with his students in ways that have a direct and fascinating link to their daily lives. In his Business Writing course, he incorporates his previous entrepreneurship experiences, preparing students for the kind of writing they will actually perform in their careers. Mike also uses a variety of tools available in MS Word to help students help themselves become better writers, plus he has them read the Flesch-Kincaid reading measure under Options in the Spellcheck function. Be sure to check out additional teaching strategies used in his Business Writing courses!

Key strategies that Jerry uses to enhance student engagement are to learn their names and to relate course content to their personal life experiences. These strategies tend to draw students into a greater understanding of the course material. As an early adopter of online teaching, he has used technology extensively including using animated slide lectures—PowerPoints to which he adds audio. To encourage additional engagement, Jerry is also considering incorporating blogs and wikis.

Social Science

Kate Thomas

To further develop student learning in her various history courses, Kate uses a variety of teaching strategies including assigning written essays, small group work, and online PowerPoint lectures. Requiring students to research and write essays is one of her favorite strategies because it helps promote deeper understanding of how to interpret and effectively use primary sources rather than simply report information. Students cannot receive a grade until they come and talk to Kate one-to-one and only after they jointly read the paper, will students be assigned a grade. After that experience, she often finds that they tend to be more conversant in the classroom. Check out Kate’s additional examples of how she makes history come alive in her courses!

Speech Communication Foreign Languages Theatre and Music

Amanda Brown

Since most students dread giving speeches, Amanda tries to help her students understand the “why” behind their assignments. She likes using the one-minute essay, requiring students to write about a topic and discuss it, first in pairs and then as a group. The group work lessens individual presentation anxiety and helps build community. Amanda also uses YouTube to help students learn how to deal with website issues, identify trustworthy sites, and recognize examples of good and bad speaking.

College of Education, Health and Human Science

Human Development and Family Studies

Jeanne Rothaupt

Application, practice, and personal reflection are the three main components that Jeanne uses to help students enhance learning. She uses “projectives”—items that help students reflect on their values, beliefs, and biases or pre-conceived notions. For example, she displays postcards and instructs students to silently choose those that attract or repel them while imagining a specific concept, such as “gender”, “poverty” or “abuse.” Students are then invited to share with one another and relate what they have observed in an effort to increase self-knowledge and build trust in the classroom community. Another innovation Jeanne uses is group exams. After individually taking an exam worth 75% of the grade, students are then asked to form teams and review and debate their test answers. Next, students complete the exam a second time, and this portion is worth the remaining 25%. Deeper understanding is often the end result of this assessment practice.

Psychology

Kiki Gorbatenko-Roth

The Practicum in Program Evaluation is Kiki’s favorite course to teach because it culminates previous semesters of learning, resulting in multiple epiphanies because it focuses on applied experiences. Specifically, each student is required to identify, plan for, implement, successfully complete, and report on his or her own independent real-world evaluation project with an external stakeholder. She also actively incorporates stories and a constructivist approach, and using a modified Socratic method, Kiki has each student identify the constructs for which he/she has the most interest/concern/difficulty and then she poses those as questions during class. Those questions become the core of the class discussion, instead of relying on a predetermined lecture outline. This often results in more engaged student dialogue.

As a 20-year teaching veteran, Mitch has tried a number of different strategies, but he currently relies on history and questions to help students learn course content. He posts questions on the course web page ahead of class and students have to answer them prior to coming to class. The questions are based on history so students have to research how we got to where we are and to find out what happened, not just what resulted. Mitch also uses the Socratic Method, helping students fill in the gaps and relate them to the topic of the day. He never lectures any more, just keeps asking questions. He is also willing to do whatever it takes to effectively teach, including getting irritated, using humor or acting crazy, and even admitting when he doesn’t know something.

School of Education

Denise Brouillard

To enhance student learning and understanding, Denise provides foundational information in the form of lectures but expects students to do additional outside reading and come to class prepared. She introduces case studies and scenarios so students can apply what they have learned and has them problem-solve in small groups, or do role-playing with other students as observers. Denise even uses video or DVD segments to promote deeper understanding; class discussions deal with the videos, much like the case studies. Read more to find out how she has used “cinema-based therapy” in her Life Span and Career Development course!

Amy Gillett

To help students fully grasp concepts taught in her Research Foundations course, Amy provides activities that tie learning with the personal life experiences belonging to her students and herself. Amy’s favorite strategy consists of creating a safe, effective learning environment that enables students in small and large groups to successfully work together for the purpose of recalling, analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating research information.

Urs Haltinner

Using the narrative approach, Urs tells his students stories, often bringing in objects (a box of baking soda, a toy tractor, a soda bottle) that allow him to create examples that turn abstract concepts into meaningful dialogue. Beginning a lesson with an object that appears to have no connection to the learning at hand allows him to raise their anticipation level. For example, a Starbucks coffee cup can tie nicely into a conversational lesson about product/service development, environmental sustainability, etc. Urs continually connects subject content to student prior knowledge, creating the “aha” effect in the lesson summary. He is also a fan of “wait time,” a strategy of purposeful silence in which he gives students permission to think before they answer and he creatively uses PowerPoint and SmartBoard technology to keep students engaged.

Carol Johnson

Passionate about the need to stay current, Carol constantly reads journals and interacts with professionals, offering a relevant, updated perspective on what students need to successfully accomplish their program’s internship requirements. One of her favorite testing strategies is the "in-basket" activity. Before class, Carol writes scenarios of events that might typically cross the desk of a school counselor. Students review the scenarios, prioritize the order in which they will work on them, and give a brief written response on how they will deal with the situation. They then form groups to talk about their list and compare plausible solutions or strategies for tackling the problems, helping to build their communication and thought processing skills.

Ruth Nyland

Desiring to incorporate different learning styles into her lessons, Ruth embraces the use of both visual aids as well as oral teaching, and promotes the use of laptop computers within the classroom. She uses humor whenever possible to help students enjoy the learning process and actively uses problem-based learning by including weekly questions or problems that require students to research how different areas of the state handle specific educational situations. This addition to her program has helped students understand what resources are available for children with disabilities.

College of Management

Business

Mark Fenton

In an attempt to recognize and respect his students’ varied learning styles Mark uses a combination of instructional techniques. He has created “skeleton” presentations which students must download from D2L and complete during lectures and discussions. Online students use the skeletons with access to additional audio files. He also uses team-based strategies to foster student collaboration, requiring them to share their work in small and large teams. This results in creative brainstorming sessions in which multiple concepts are discussed. Because he sees laptops as another learning tool, he has students explore various internet-based applications or other web posted content. Check out why Mark is an advocate for using Criterion Referenced Performance Testing!

Desiring to accommodate different learning styles, Adel uses visual, auditory, discussion and problem-solving formats to give meaning to abstract retail concepts; telling animated industry-based stories in order to capture student interest and imagination. He also assesses students’ prior knowledge at the start of each semester to determine where gaps exist, and what clarifications or corrections he should make before moving forward.

Nancy Murray

Based on her extensive industry background, Nancy uses real world examples and experiences to help students “get it” in her retail courses. Also, for her face-to-face courses she recorded her lectures and question-and-answer sessions and then shared them with students in her online classes. To accomplish this she used Echo 360 (audio capture system) and Camtasia.

Operations and Management

David Ding

To help his students more effectively learn course topics, David often uses simulations to teach how things works, like balancing production lines. He frequently uses case studies and has students apply real life experiences. For example, he has them use web sites and resources to research how to start a business, both in terms of why and where to locate new businesses.

Brian Finder

Wanting his students to meaningfully grasp occupational safety principles, Brian has them identify their hobbies and the numerous risks present in those activities. After assessing the magnitude of those risks, they identify realistic strategies to manage the risks, with the ultimate goal of minimizing the potential for human and/or property loss. Brian uses a variety of animated teaching strategies ranging from sharing emotion-packed stories to incorporating illusionary tricks aligned with specific course concepts.

Kat Lui

To deepen student learning, Kat incorporates the use of class interaction and discussion, encouraging the exchange of questions and answers both in-class and online. In her courses, she actively uses learning plans, requiring students to develop an individual plan that lists their objectives for the course, as well as their “horizon” (their final goal for the end of the semester). Not only does this push them to take ownership of their learning, they create a vision, a horizon of what their learning may look like. Another innovation is the creation of a “poster tour.” Her students have to critique a peer-reviewed article, prepare a poster depicting their evaluation, and participate in a gallery tour of posters. The unstructured dialogue that flows creates opportunities for deeper learning. Relative to online learning, she is considering using Skype or other technologies with audio/visual interactivity to spice up student interaction.

Diane Olson

With many years of industry experience, Diane strives to train students to be effective program managers by showing them a structured, disciplined way to understand and use the material. She starts with a theory and then applies it to a real life situation. To teach both her traditional and older, nontraditional students, she trains them in using MS Project software applications and creatively incorporates the use of I-clickers. The clickers enable everyone to “vote” on class topics and using this device has resulted in stimulating class discussions and it actively involves everyone in the process. Responses are graded.

Elbert Sorrell

Using a three-step process to enhance student understanding, Elbert provides them with 1) readings, 2) relevant, supportive explanation, and 3) engages them in applying course content to Risk Control topics. Although he includes the use of case studies, he also developed an “issues paper” assignment. Students have to identify a related issue, research the background, conduct a literature review, include more than one perspective, and formulate their own perspective. Elbert gives them intermediate deadlines, like a statement of the issue by a certain date, an annotated bibliography by a slightly later date, and so on.

Believing that students learn best by engagement, Renee constantly seeks creative ways to help them retain course content. For instance, rather than lecturing on what the research shows are the most effective leadership traits, she has students actively develop a list of traits based on their own experience. First, students individually think of or recall the best leader that they have worked with and identify their top traits and characteristics. Then each individual in a team discusses the traits and the team members rank the most prevalent 10-15 characteristics, creating “themed” categories. Renee also uses team strategies to help her students take theories, concepts, and practices and apply them in different situations. She uses small and large groups to tackle questions and feels confident that when students realize that a theory or concept is usable, they are likely to draw on that theory in future applications.

School of Hospitality Leadership

Bob Davies

Using applied and contemporary case studies, Bob teaches students how to think critically, working one-to-one with them to make it easier for them to learn. He effectively connects hospitality industry experience to classroom learning, teaching essential concepts relevant to the hotel, golf and service industries. His favorite teaching strategy is “backward case study.” Students start with a case and eventually get back to the theory behind the elements of the case, so the case study (which is long and detailed) becomes the umbrella that covers all course objectives and applied content. Another strategy that he previously used involved implementing a “team test” approach designed to help students discuss and more deeply process test content.

College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

Biology

Mandy Little

Believing in the value and importance of engaging non-majors in service learning, Mandy actually involves her students in eradicating invasive plants—buckthorn, honeysuckle and mustard garlic. She uses humor as well as scientific demonstrations to enhance student understanding. She also uses a team-based approach that consists of having students read ahead, take quizzes and then use the same quiz with their team to insure everyone knows the material before doing fieldwork. In addition, Mandy uses real life examples of how biology is present in students’ lives and has them read “Biology in the News” online. They then write brief summaries and commentary and complete peer evaluations.

Chemistry

John Kirk

To help his students, whether advanced science students or non-science majors, better understand course content, John uses two technologies. First, he brings in a Tablet PC and wireless presenter so that he and the students can write on the PC and it will appear on the room’s screen. Because it allows him freedom to move about the room, students follow more closely. Second, he uses “Ubiquitous Presenter” and students log on to a server and they then have access to a PowerPoint presentation. This program allows the students’ laptops to essentially act as large “clickers” with more functionality. Students can read the screen and select an answer. The immediacy of the feedback is an effective learning strategy and it creates a sense of community.

Engineering and Technology

John Petro

Engaging students in applying relevant industry examples to real life problems and issues is one of John’s most effective teaching strategies. He has found that connecting lessons to the students’ post-collegiate careers promotes deeper learning and that requiring them to explain course content enhances understanding and future application in the workforce. John stresses learning the “core basics”, believing that students will then be able to build upon them in their future careers.

Mathematics Statistics and Computer Science

Wan Bae

Teaching Computer Science to mostly freshmen, Wan conducts a five-minute review at the beginning of each class with her students. She insists that they ask about the work they did in the previous class. That allows her to gauge whether or not they understood the subject. Relative to teaching programming language, Wan worked with her advisor during her graduate studies to develop tools to teach Java. Although the materials were designed for younger students, she found the program helped engage college students in learning the process and when she used this innovation at Stout, she had very positive results. Students call the group projects “awesome,” “complex,” and “authentic.” This innovative teaching strategy enables students to implement a 2D game program using Java and to meaningfully evaluate all projects, including their own.

Nelu Ghenciu

As a big proponent of discovery-based learning, or inquiry-based learning, Nelu has his students explain a math problems first to each other in small groups, and then to the entire class. He believes Math is like a foreign language, with new terms and processes so breaking up class hours into many interactive parts helps keep students engaged.

Nasser Hadidi

By using laptops in class, Nasser familiarizes students with SPSS and Excel which facilitates the students’ learning process. He uses them to provide an ease in doing arithmetic; this enables students to focus more on learning statistics and less on worrying about the math. Using laptop technology allows Nasser to provide instant feedback, even in a large class.

Physics

Jo Hopp

In an effort to address student apprehension about taking Physics, Jo requires students to come see her during the first two weeks of class, developing a rapport with them by focusing on their personal interests. With regard to assignments, she alternates between two writing assignments, 1) her students prepare a Physics journal (they observe physics outside of class in every-day situations), and 2) they read Science News. For the later assignment, they write a brief summary on one article, tell why they chose that article and what implications it has for society. Jo also offers an alternative to a final exam by having students complete a project that researches and describes physics in a company in their field. In addition, she uses in-class clickers for peer instruction, posing multiple-choice questions to introduce a new topic, check content understanding, and test comprehension. Check out how clickers are used as an attendance and punctuality strategy!

Alan Scott

How could working with a distorted ruler improve student learning? Scott uses “bad rulers” to help students develop an appreciation for measurement theory. He also creatively challenges them with questions and uses different learning modes including case studies, hands-on-labs and shared book readings, to enhance student understanding and allow for a better grasp of scientific concepts